Google Cloud Platform VS Terraform

Compare Google Cloud Platform VS Terraform and see what are their differences

ScreenshotMAX

The all-in-one Screenshot API for developers: capture websites, generate PDFs, record videos, and automate it all with powerful, scalable infrastructure. No browser setup, no hassle. Just clean results, fast. featured

Contents:

» Base Details
» Videos
» Reviews
» Alternatives

Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud provides flexible infrastructure, end-to-security, modern productivity, and intelligent insights engineered to help your business thrive.

Terraform

Tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently.

Landing page //
2023-08-02

Google Cloud accelerates every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business and industry by delivering enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology, and tools that help developers build more sustainably. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

Landing page //
2023-09-24

Google Cloud Platform

Website: cloud.google.com
Pricing URL: Official Google Cloud Platform Pricing
$ Details: -

Edit details

Terraform

Website: terraform.io
Pricing URL: -
$ Details

Edit details

Google Cloud Platform features and specs

Scalability
Google Cloud Platform offers highly scalable services that can grow with your needs, allowing businesses to handle varying loads effectively.
Global Infrastructure
GCP has data centers across the globe, providing low latency and high availability for users worldwide.
Advanced Security
Google Cloud provides robust security features, including strong data encryption, identity management, and regular security audits.
Machine Learning and AI
GCP offers advanced machine learning and AI platforms such as TensorFlow and AutoML, which facilitate the development of sophisticated AI solutions.
Cost Management Tools
GCP provides tools like cost analysis, budgeting, and reporting to help manage and optimize cloud expenditure.

Possible disadvantages of Google Cloud Platform

Complex Pricing Structure
Google Cloud Platform's pricing can be complex and difficult to understand, which might lead to unexpected expenses if not monitored carefully.
Service Maturity
Some of GCP's newer services are not as mature or feature-rich as similar offerings from competitors like AWS and Azure.
Steeper Learning Curve
For individuals and organizations new to cloud platforms, GCP can have a steeper learning curve compared to some other providers.
Support Costs
Premium support tiers can be expensive, limiting options for smaller businesses or individual users seeking timely and efficient support.
Region Availability
Not all GCP services are available in every region, which may be a limitation for businesses operating in specific geographic areas.

Terraform features and specs

Infrastructure as Code
Terraform allows you to define your infrastructure in configuration files that can be versioned and stored in a version control system. This makes it easy to track changes, roll back if necessary, and collaborate with team members.
Multi-Cloud Support
Terraform supports various cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and others. This allows you to manage your entire infrastructure using a single tool, regardless of the underlying provider.
Immutability
Terraform promotes immutable infrastructure, meaning once a component is created, it is not modified in place but replaced if changes are needed. This leads to more predictable and stable deployments.
State Management
Terraform maintains the state of your infrastructure, which helps in tracking resource changes over time and making incremental updates. This is crucial for applying changes in a controlled manner.
Community and Ecosystem
Terraform has a large and active community, along with a rich ecosystem of providers and modules. This makes it easier to find support, share solutions, and leverage pre-built components.

Possible disadvantages of Terraform

Complex State Management
While state management is a significant feature, managing state files can become complex and risky. Issues like state file corruption or sharing between team members can lead to challenges.
Learning Curve
Terraform has a steep learning curve for beginners, especially those who are not familiar with infrastructure as code concepts or the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL).
Partial Updates
Terraform's plan and apply operations are not atomic, meaning that partial updates can sometimes leave your infrastructure in an inconsistent state if an error occurs during execution.
Dependency Management
Managing dependencies between resources can be challenging in Terraform. Misconfigured dependencies can lead to issues during resource creation, deletion, or updates.
Cost Management
While Terraform is excellent for provisioning resources, it does not have built-in cost management or optimization features. Users need to rely on third-party tools to manage and optimize costs.

Analysis of Google Cloud Platform

Overall verdict

Google Cloud Platform is generally regarded as a strong contender in the cloud service market, suitable for businesses and developers looking for reliable, scalable cloud solutions.

Why this product is good

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is considered good due to its robust infrastructure, global network, strong data analytics and machine learning tools such as BigQuery and TensorFlow, and a wide array of services catering to compute, storage, networking, and beyond. It also offers flexible pricing options, integration with open-source tools, and strong security features.

Recommended for

Businesses seeking scalable cloud solutions
Developers needing strong support for data analytics and machine learning
Companies that prioritize security and privacy
Enterprises looking for a global network infrastructure
Startups interested in flexible pricing models

Analysis of Terraform

Overall verdict

Overall, Terraform is considered a robust and effective tool for infrastructure automation. It’s ideal for organizations seeking to streamline their deployment processes, ensure consistency across environments, and automate the lifecycle of their resources. Its flexibility and provider ecosystem make it a valuable asset for teams working in multi-cloud or hybrid environments.

Why this product is good

Terraform, developed by HashiCorp, is widely regarded as an excellent tool for infrastructure as code (IaC) due to its ability to provision and manage infrastructure across multiple cloud providers. It offers a consistent CLI workflow, and its HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language) is powerful yet simple, allowing users to define complex infrastructure configurations in a human-readable format. Terraform’s state management, modules, and community support further contribute to its strengths, enabling efficient resource management and scalability.

Recommended for

Terraform is particularly recommended for DevOps teams, infrastructure engineers, and IT professionals looking to implement infrastructure as code practices. It's also suitable for organizations aiming to adopt DevOps methodologies, enhance their cloud infrastructure management, or manage complex infrastructure at scale. Additionally, teams operating in multi-cloud environments or those looking to automate infrastructure changes can greatly benefit from using Terraform.

Google Cloud Platform videos

+ Add

Amazon Web Services vs Google Cloud Platform - AWS vs GCP | Difference Between GCP and AWS

Terraform videos

+ Add

Wampler Terraform | Reverb Tone Report Demo

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Google Cloud Platform and Terraform)

Google Cloud Platform

Terraform

Cloud Computing

85 85%

Cloud Computing

15% 15

DevOps Tools

0 0%

DevOps Tools

100% 100

Cloud Infrastructure

100 100%

Cloud Infrastructure

0% 0

Developer Tools

53 53%

Developer Tools

47% 47

User comments

Share your experience with using Google Cloud Platform and Terraform. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Google Cloud Platform and Terraform

Google Cloud Platform Reviews

10 Best Web Hosting Companies in India(December 2023)

Google Cloud consistently performs well in load tests, handling high traffic volumes with minimal impact on website performance.

Source: www.vikatan.com

Best Dedicated Server Providers for E-commerce Businesses in India

Big Data and Analytics: Using Google’s data processing resources, Google Cloud provides dependable big data and analytics solutions, enabling your e-commerce business to make data-driven decisions.

Source: pricealertbd.com

The Best Dedicated Server Operating System for UK-Based Business

Google Cloud offers automated backup and disaster recovery options and effortlessly connects with other Google services. Because of its affordable high-performance computing costs, businesses may continue to lead the way in technological innovation in the digital sphere.

Source: featurestic.com

The Best Dedicated Servers for Enterprise Businesses in India: Scalable and Reliable

The cutting-edge architecture of Google Cloud is one of its most distinctive features. Their dedicated servers are constructed on top-notch hardware, utilizing Google’s extensive network and technological know-how to provide great performance, stability, and reliability. Businesses may easily support their mission-critical workloads by relying on the infrastructure of Google...

Source: india07.in

AWS vs GCP: Choosing the Right Cloud Platform

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) have established themselves as industry leaders in the cloud computing landscape. With their ability to provide a wide range of services to meet diverse business needs, on demand, and a low entry point make them enticing solutions for many organizations.

Source: openmetal.io

Terraform Reviews

Do not use AWS CloudFormation

Terraform, on the other hand, will occupy your shell until the directly-involved AWS service coughs up an error. No additional tooling is required. Terraform will just relay the error message from the affected service indicating what you’ve done wrong.

Source: gswallow.medium.com

Top 5 Ansible Alternatives in 2022: Server Automation Solutions by Alexander Fashakin on the 19th Aug 2021 facebook Linked In Twitter

Although Terraform and Ansible are both server automation tools, there are still a few significant differences between the two. For example, Terraform is declarative while Ansible allows for both procedural configurations and declarative configurations. Also, Ansible works best as a configuration management tool while Terraform leans towards cloud orchestration.

Source: www.servertribe.com

35+ Of The Best CI/CD Tools: Organized By Category

Terraform is compatible with a wide range of Cloud providers, including Azure, VMWare, and AWS. If you’re subscribed to multiple cloud providers, Terraform is a great way to ensure that they have consistent configurations.

Source: www.cloudzero.com

Why we use Terraform and not Chef, Puppet, Ansible, SaltStack, or CloudFormation

Example: Terraform and Ansible. You use Terraform to deploy all the underlying infrastructure, including the network topology (i.e., VPCs, subnets, route tables), data stores (e.g., MySQL, Redis), load balancers, and servers. You then use Ansible to deploy your apps on top of those servers.This is an easy approach to start with, as there is no extra infrastructure to run...

Source: blog.gruntwork.io

Ansible overtakes Chef and Puppet as the top cloud configuration management tool

Breaking these results down year-over-year, use of Ansible grew from 36% in 2018 to 41% in 2019--surpassing Chef, which grew from 36% to 37%, as well as Puppet, which grew from 34% to 37%. Rounding out the list is Terraform, which experienced a jump from 20% to 31%, and Salt, which increased in usage from 13% to 18%.

Source: www.techrepublic.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Google Cloud Platform should be more popular than Terraform. It has been mentiond 199 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Google Cloud Platform mentions (199)

Videos GraphQL API with AppSync, Lambda, DynamoDB - FakeTube #6
We will now focus on the AWS AppSync - serverless GraphQL and Pub/Sub API. As far as I know it's a very unique service and there is no direct one-to-one equivalent (in terms of GraphQL features) in other cloud providers like Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
Deployments in the Agentic Era
Today, we are entering the Agentic Era. Agentic apps promise to deliver an unprecedented productivity boost, but to do so, they need access to the most sensitive business data: conversations, documents, decisions. Customers do not want to transfer such data to an unknown and untrusted external provider's environment. Instead, they expect these products to run inside their cloud accounts (whether it be AWS, GCP, or... - Source: dev.to / 18 days ago
Building a RAG System with Vertex AI, Pinecone, and LangChain (Step-by-Step Guide)
Go to Google Cloud and sign up with your Gmail. - Source: dev.to / 21 days ago
Taking The Cloud Resume Challenge: GCP Style
What's self-learning without some challenges to shape us, hence for the past few weeks, I've taken upon The Cloud Resume Challenge by Forrest Brazeal and re-created my resume using Google Cloud services, instead of my usual cloud platform (nothing wrong with exploring a little hehe). - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
How to Integrate Google APIs in Your Next.js Project
We will first need to create a new Service Account to do so go here. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago

Terraform mentions (32)

Scaffolding Serverless Web Application on AWS
Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool that lets you build, change, and version infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform code is in the terraform directory. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
Integrating Terraform with CI/CD Pipelines
In recent years, there has been a significant shift towards automation of infrastructure deployment processes. One popular tool that has emerged as a key player in this space is Terraform, an open-source infrastructure as code (IaC) software tool developed by HashiCorp. This article will explore how Terraform can be integrated into continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines using GitHub Actions as an... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
Deploying Your Outdoor Activities Map with Terraform
Terraform is an open-source infrastructure-as-code software tool created by HashiCorp. It allows you to define and manage your infrastructure as code, making it easy to provision and manage resources across multiple cloud providers. With Terraform, you can ensure consistent and repeatable deployments, making it an ideal choice for automating your cloud infrastructure. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
Trigger CI using Terraform Cloud
Continuous Integration(CI) pipelines needs a target infrastructure to which the CI artifacts are deployed. The deployments are handled by CI or we can leverage Continuous Deployment pipelines. Modern day architecture uses automation tools like terraform, ansible to provision the target infrastructure, this type of provisioning is called IaaC. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
Using Let's Encrypt with the Puppet Enterprise console
Had an itch I've been meaning to scratch for a while. I build my Puppet environment using Terraform, which makes it nice and easy to tear things down and rebuild them. That is great, but it does leave me with an issue when it comes to the console SSL certificates. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago